Question for CatShooter?

[chuckw2]

CatShooter,

How were the numbers for PD's in South Dakota this past year.

I shot northern California, southern Oregon and the numbers were way down. We shot about 80% fewer dogs last year on both hunts.

Northern Wyoming was a little better, but still not red hot.

The thing that made the Wyoming hunt great was that we shot a truckload of jack-rabbits.

I am going back to west Texas and Wyoming this spring...


How do you think SD will be? I haven't shot there in four years.

Chuck

 

[people]

I am up here in

 

[Quigley284]

Chuck, We used to hunt SD all the time on Rose Bud. We quit going there when they made a guide mandatory. We tried it for one year and never went back. We paid $100 dollars a day for a guy to sit in his lawn chair and eat or food and sodas. We knew more about the town locations than he did. Went to Thunder Basin in Wyoming for 3 years until they turned it into a Black Footed ferret reintroduction area. That was the end of that. After that we went to Pine Ridge. We were able to find a great spot to hunt for the next 5 years. The land this guy had was solid dog town for 7 miles wide and 2 miles across. 2 years ago they got the plague and you can drive his drive way and see nothing but empty mounds. Its getting very difficult to find good shooting anymore. I have no experience on the other Reservations in SD. Mike

 

[patchhound]

Hey Chuck, Things were`nt all that great this year in here in my neck of the woods this year either. I think the mild winters we`ve had here in WY. are take`in its toll by not killing fleas thus cuasing plague. Its kind of scary, real good idea to use good bug spray while your out blastin rodents thees days...I didnt go to a few of my best spots this year hoping #`s will be up in 08. Guess there`s always bunny blastin, just make sure you don`t waist the cottontails- A lot of people dont know they are game animals and if caught, you will get fined big $$$.

 

[tuck2]

The plague and posion has cut prairie dog shooting way down in the area I live in the western part of Nebraska. Four of the bigger prairie towns I shot in last year were posioned . The plague has wiped out an other. I went shooting 16 times this year and have only shot about 600 prairie dogs, per my shooting log.

 

[chuckw2]

How long do you think it will take the populations to build back up?


It cost a hell of a lot of money to fly from Atlanta to anywhere, and it has been two years of substandard shooting.


In 2009 I am going to give West Texas a try...But Northern California and Southern Oregon are my favorite places.


I thought that it was against the law to poison them?

Where are you boys going to shoot in 2009???

 

[chuckw2]

Any of you boys shoot in Colorado? I was out there a couple of weeks ago and saw quite a few..


In the back of my mind I think the tree-huggers might have stopped PD shooting several years ago, but I'am not sure

 

[patchhound]

I`m a bit confused about the Colorado shootin thing, they say it`s illegal to shoot them but when I google`ed pd shooting in co I saw a lodge that chartered hunts for them in 06. Maybee its a new law...Even the lodge reported a bad year in the summer of 06. Would`nt be ironic if everybody kept poisoning them till they were indangered and protected??? Its a sad truth but lookin at the #`s I`m starting to think some sort of conservation MIGHT be in order- really, I`de hate to see them wiped out fore ever! The ranchers wont agree but its them and the ****ing plague thats KILLING THEM ALL. Is there any such group like Prarie Dogs Unlimited? The idea worked pretty good for the ducks...

 

[chuckw2]

I wonder how many litters a healthy PD will have in a year?


Many more people are shooting PD's now than 10 years ago..

What is the plague exactly? Can we catch it? I never touch the little beast because I am afraid of catching something.

Surely some bunny-hugger will come up with a vaccine to save the little darlings.

 

[Linefinder]

Sylvatic plague. In humans, it's known as bubonic plague. When a town is infected with plague, it's almost always a 100% mortality rate to pdogs within that town.

A friend of mine lives near Strausberg, Co., and had a small, but nice, town about half a mile from his house. A few "environmentalists" from Boulder caught half a dozen pdogs in their fair city, and illegally released them into the town by my friends house. Within two weeks, there wasn't a live pdog left in that town. Apparently, one of the "transplants" was a plague carrier. That happened three years ago, and there hasn't been a pdog in that town since.

Shooting of pdogs in Colorado for control purposes on private land was never affected by the pdog shooting ban enacted in this state in '03. You just couldn't shoot them on public land.

However, that changed again this year. Colorado now has a season on blacktail pdogs on public land. It is closed, however, during the spring. Pdog shooting on private land is not regulated at all.

Truth is, the ban on pdog shooting as it previously existed,and even the current pdog game laws on the books) here are pretty much just a "feel good" measure to provide some comfort to the huggers. Probably +90% of the blacktail pdogs in this state reside on privately owned land.

Mike

BTW....good seeing you here, CatShooter!

 

[patchhound]

Thats the "scary" part Chuck, people can and have got the plague from contact with outdoor activities. Fortunatly its treatable thees days. I remember reading signs in CA back when I lived there about ground squirls having it and to keep pets away from them. It about scared the **** out of me to see bubonic plague warnings!!! Another good exuse to get a long range gun and stay the hell out of the towns. I think we should make peace with the greenies and drop penicillin on the buggers and not poison. There are a few oil fields I work at that have large populations of pd`s which I indeed shoot to keep #s down, to my knowledge, nobody`s got sick yet but thats probably because the dogs all are`nt dead.

From what study`in I`ve done on prarie dogs it sounds like they only have one litter of 4-5 pups per year. Big reason I wait till after May to shoot "low # areas", if you blast the mother before the little ones are old enough- well, you know....This year I did`nt go to most of my best spots, mostly cause I bought my first house this year and time & $$$ been tied up but also I wanted to see the inpact of one guy not shootin them. Will see next year.

 

[chuckw2]

CatShooter,
I shot Surprise Valley last year and it was very marginal. All of the locals were surprised there were so few squirrels.

Patch,
I thought PD's had multiple litters, just like mice or rats...


Which area of which state do you guys think will be best in 2008?

I have already booked one hunt in West Texas for next year, but want to go a couple of more times!!!

 

[Linefinder]

Chuck,

One litter a year. Here in Colorado, the pups are born sometime in April, and come above ground for the first time usually during the last part of May, possibly into the first week of June, depending on the early spring weather.

Mike

 

[chuckw2]

Linefinder,

Can you shoot them in Colorado?


I see a bunch at the airport!

Chuck

 

[Linefinder]

Oh, yeah, you can shoot them in Colorado. On private land, there are no regulations at all. No season, no bag limits. You just need landowner permission, which usually isn't that hard to obtain. Feed stores, and agricultural equipment dealerships in the smaller towns in the eastern half of the state are a good place to ask around.

I once stopped at a tractor dealership,only commercial bldg in town, from what I could tell) and within 10 minutes had 3 ranchers give me permission to hunt their spreads....which equated to almost 40,000 acres.

I'd have to check the regs,you can look them up online through the Colorado DOW), but shooting pdogs on public land is now legal here again. However....there is a closed season on them, and I think it's closed from about February through June....I'll check for you.

I-25 runs North/South through the state, and pretty much bisects the state in half. The majority of the pdogs live on the east side of the Interstate, but OTOH, almost all of this land is privately owned. Wheat, corn, and cattle is big industry on the eastern Colorado plains. Most of the "agri" types aren't usually too free with shooting permission, but most of the cattle ranchers are happy to see you pull up.

Mike

 

[Linefinder]

According to the wildlife biologists, PD's have only one mating season and one litter per year, regardless of weather.

My theory,and it's just that) is that there is only one litter per year. However, it's not unusual to shoot a town in the late summer/early fall where the pdogs look like little footballs, but a town only a half-mile away is populated by a high percentage of scrawny looking individuals. This probably leads to speculation that the small ones are younger/pups.

I think the dramatically different physical sizes within such a small geographical region probably have something to do with the nutrients in the forage at the specific site. And this, no matter how hard I've tried to discern a difference in dirt, vegetation, etc., isn't apparent to the naked eye.

Mike

 

[Linefinder]

It's possible that a few starve due to Mom getting zapped, but I suspect, for most of them, life's cut way too short to starve.

Funny thing about pdogs....during the period between the pup's birth and it's first time above ground is the most dangerous time of it's life. Female pdogs will kill and eat any pup not it's own during this time frame. I've read estimates that under natural conditions, this fraticide can claim the lives of ~25% of the young pups in any given colony. You could reasonably assume that with Mom no longer around to protect her young, the incidents of successful fraticide would increase.

But, once the pups come above ground for the first time, any lactating female will nurse any pup in the colony. There are probably enough lactating females that have lost their young below ground to support a substantial number of orphaned pups.

OTOH....who the heck knows what the little nasties do underground and out of sight....

Mike

 

[Spotcheck_Billy]

Wouldn't that be "matricide"?

 

[Linefinder]

Science,or Latin, whichever it is), never was my strong suit....

Mike